Amador Valley Competition Cheer took home first place at Deer Valley Regionals on Jan. 7 after an undefeated season. 

“My team ultimately stood out from other teams because our routine had the highest score out of all the teams competing. We had such difficult stunts and tumbling that we put into our routine in order to make us stand out to the judges,” said AV Comp Cheer captain Savana Harper (‘23). 

Competition cheer practices 4 days a week for 2 hours. Not only are they practicing there cheers and stunts, they also do lots of conditioning work to help them perform to the best of their abilities. 

“To prepare the team for their final regionals competition, we worked a lot on stunting technique and building confidence in skills even when fatigued,” said Coach Eileen Drury. 

Comp cheer starts preparing for their season over the summer. Although they had lots of time to prepare for regionals, the road the team had to take was a bumpy one.

“It was difficult because people were either hurt or out of town so a few weeks before that January 7th competition, we had to replace people. [I was] worried because we wouldn’t have that much practice with the replacements,” said Harper. 

Even with the ups and downs throughout the season, the team still came out on top and were able to earn a spot at Nationals.

“I am so proud of them for achieving an undefeated regionals season and can’t wait to see them be even better at Nationals in February,” said Drury. 

Nationals take place in Disneyland on Feb. 25. This is the teams biggest competition out of the whole year; only a handful of other high school cheer teams reach this high level of competition.

“Nationals is our biggest competition of the year. It is in February and all the other regional competitions prepare us for this one. The regional competitions are also extremely important because you have to get enough points in your routine to receive a bid to nationals, so it’s crucial that we hit our routines to the best of our ability,” said Harper.